Kata Markon

[JFAlward AT aol.com]

In a message dated 3/6/02 8:59:29 PM Pacific Standard Time, 
mabernat AT cub.kcnet.org writes:

<< Interestingly enough, it has been nearly the same amount of time since 
Kennedy died that most scholars claim between the death of Jesus and the 
writing of Mark.  We have enough eye-witnesses around that if anyone made 
historical claims about him that were not true, someone could refute them. >>
 
I often hear the claim that if the gospels stories were false, they would 
have been ridiculed as false at that time, so the apparent lack of refutation 
stands as proof that the stories are true.  I reject this argument.  Mark's 
gospel, the first one, wasn't written until about 70 AD, and the life span in 
those days was less than 30, so few  would have been around to refute the 
stories about events alleged to have occurred about forty years earlier. 
Furthermore, even if there were persons still alive who lived in and around 
the areas where Jesus was alleged to have worked his miracles, how would they 
forty years later be able to claim that such events never happened?  

It is virtually impossible to prove that something did *not* happen, even if 
it was alleged to have happened recently.  Suppose, for example, a person in 
your city claimed that about a year ago a miracle-worker raised someone from 
the dead, calmed the sea, and fed thousands of people with just a few loaves 
of bread.  Who would ever be able to say it never happened?  We certainly 
wouldn't take the lack evidence against this man's claim as an indication 
that the events this person described actually happened.  Why, then, should 
we believe that the lack of protest about the stories of Jesus' alleged 
miracles, stories told forty years after the alleged events, is evidence that 
the stories must be true?
 
Now, if the Bible stories were true, then one would expect that there would 
exist some extrabiblical contemporary evidence of these events in poetry, 
literature, or the reports of historians and journalists.  However, there is 
not the slightest mention of the miraculous feeding of five thousand, then 
later the four thousand, from just a handful of bread and fish.  Nine 
thousand people.  Surely most of them would have told and retold their 
personal miracle story over and over again, as would have their children, and 
so on down through the generations, up to this day.  But, not a single peep 
about this from contemporaries  has been recorded.
 
There is also no mention anywhere of the murder by Herod's swordsmen of all 
of the children under two years of age in Bethlehem and the surrounding 
suburbs.  What a sensational story that would have been, if it had ever 
happened.  The details of the slaughter of these innocents would still be 
talked about today, if the murders of all those babies had actually occurred. 
 But, there is not a word of this outside the Bible.  How come Matthew is the 
only one who wrote about it?
 
How could these astonishing events not have been important enough to have 
been recorded extrabiblically, if they had actually occurred? 

Now, let me return to my argument that Mark's story of Jesus' calming of the 
sea (Mark 4:37-41) was copied from Jonah (Jonah 1:4-16).

There are five elements in the two stories that are not to be found anywhere 
else in literature or folklore:

1. A raging storm threatens a boat.
2. The hero is asleep on the boat.
3. The hero is awakened and criticized for his apparent lack of concern.
4. The storm is miraculously calmed.
5. The passengers fear the miracle-worker. 

These correspondences hardly seem coincidental, so the conclusion that Mark 
made up this story seems inescapable, especially in light of the fact that 
there are several other examples of Mark seemingly doing the same thing.

For example, consider the miraculous feeding stories: Elisha's men complain 
that they can't feed one hundred men on with so little bread, but Elisha told 
them to feed them anyway, and it was miraculously accomplished, with food 
left over. (2 Kings 4:42-44). Thus, Mark had Jesus' men complain, too, about 
having to feed so many men with so little bread, and  Jesus told them to feed 
the five thousand anyway, the feeding was miraculously accomplished, and food 
was left over (Mark 6:32-42). Evidently, Mark wanted his readers to recall 
the Elisha story and recognize that whatever power the Lord had given Elisha, 
it was given to Jesus fifty times over.

In this forum we have seen how Jesus' prayer at Gethsemane and his betrayal 
by Judas was patterned after events in the life of David, so I won't repeat 
that information here.  It is sufficient to say, I believe, that the evidence 
that Mark's stories about Jesus are completely fictional is much too strong 
even for the most ardent apologist to ignore.

Joseph F. Alward
"A Skeptical View of Christianity and the Bible"
http://members.aol.com/jalw/joseph_alward.html